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Great Vengeance and Furious Anger

I like that blog post title. Almost sounds like an old 70’s movie, right? Like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Or maybe a comic book… but not something from Marvel or DC, more like one of those flash in the pan Chaos! titles from the 90’s, the kind with gratuitous cheesecake on the cover, like Lady Death, something that sold for no other reason than a graphic cover with scantily clad goth chicks.

Of course, I just pulled it from Jules in Pulp Fiction, but we can pretend that I had some loftier source in mind, right?

Oh, and not that there is anything wrong with goth chicks. Nope. All in favor, myself. Anything that breaks people out of the normal everyday is all right in my book.

Mah point, I say mah point, son, is to talk about the furious angah part in that there title. Now pay attention, boy!

(Why oh why hasn’t anyone ever done a live action Foghorn Leghorn movie? That’s what I want to know. A live actor portraying a cartoon rooster portraying a live actor. Recursive loop is recursive. Win!)

I’ve been liking my Warrior quite a bit over the last few days. I shifted to dual wield swords Fury spec, and blew through the last 13 levels. I dinged 61 last night, and there’s gonna be no sleep ’til Brooklyn or Bust, baby.

I’ve been having so MUCH fun, in fact, that I looked ahead to see when I could finally get Titan’s Grip.

So anyway… I’ve got one of the Bloodied Arcanite Reapers, those wonderful two-handed axes, enchanted with Crusader. Okay, to be honest, I’ve got one of every type of Heirloom currently in the game except for the ring, I’m always too busy with that real life thing to be in the Saturday fishing tournament. I’ve even got two of each Trinket, and the old Emblem daggers.

But here’s the thing. With the Titan’s Grip thingie, and the way Orcs get Expertise from axes, does it sound like a good idea to dual wield Heirloom Bloodied Arcanite Reapers?

It’s not that hard to get another one, because I’ve got a character maxed out with the Argent Tournament. Heirlooms for Justice Points is a sucker’s game, the markup is ridonkulous, but for Crusader’s Seals, it’s just right.

You see, a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper costs 95 Crusader’s Seals. That sounds like a lot, right? The thing is, since 4.0 went live, getting a Crusader Seal in your blue bag from some of the dailies is now guaranteed. Something like Threat From Above, which of course my Druid can still solo easily, is now worth 3 Seals all by itself. And when you unlock all of Argent Tournament, there are all those extra dailies that give Crusaders Seals.

Even without running ToC, I’m pulling in 12 Seals a day, easy. I could get more crammed into a day, but why bother? It’s not like I’d be 69 by Friday.

But should I? For those of you with Fury Warriors, does it sound like something that would be worth doing, for the fun of it as well as the gobs and gobs of DPS? My Hit Rating obviously would be in the tank, so whaddaya think?

Oh, and for those folks that may be mourning their “self heal” Blood spec Death Knight, let me tell you, your Blood spec didn’t go away. It simply moved to Fury Warriors. Between Bloodthirst and Victory Rush, and with the Glyphs that extend Victory Rush’s duration and effectiveness and the Glyph to increase healing from Bloodthirst, I’m never below full unless I’ve got 4 or more mobs on me. I sneer at Elites with scorn. /scorn!

Frankly, what with the haste/attack speed procs, it really does feel quite a bit like an old Blood spec Death Knight while running with Unholy Presence for the haste buff. And that’s a GOOD thing!

So, two points to the post. One, what advice do my Fury Warrior peeps have out there for dual wielding Bloodied Arcanite Reapers specifically, and Titan’s Grip in general, and two, hey, if you’re wanting Heirloom items and are kicking yourself for not buying before Justice points went live, go hit the Argent Tournament up for some cheap Seals.

You know what also feels like running an old Blood DK with Unholy Presence up? Running a new Blood DK with Unholy Presence up, that’s what. I decided to risk the scorn of every DK blogger on the planet and gave it a shot, and it turns out that things just keep dying fast while I just keep not even kind of dying. My Frost spec doesn’t kill things any faster unless you count me.

I had a ton of fun leveling my warrior. I had her sitting at 19 as a twink till they introduced BG experience and by that time I had marks of honor to spare every heirloom I could get.. By the mid 40’s I had a battleworn thrash blade and a flurry axe both with crusader enchants. Made battle grounds really fun. Rogue had the drop on me? Their mistake. At 50 I went prot and leveled via the dungeon finder mostly tanking. I have really come to love the class. Glad to hear you’re having fun with yours too.

Foghorn Leghorn is my favorite toon of all time. I just think a live action remake would ruin all my fond memories of it. Good luck with all the leveling, I’m about to get my second hunter to 80 its been a great ride 🙂

So why is BBB quoting pulp fiction, I should read. On justice points horses for courses, I brought 4 primordial saronite last week just to give characters bumping into the 4k limit some breathing room. Then brought one more and made my priest some boots. Sorry no opinion on fury wariors mine are both arms/prot.

If you’ve decided to spec for Titan’s Grip (dual-wielding 2H weapons) and not Single-Minded Fury (bonus damage when dual-wielding 1H weapons), then yes, the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper is worth it. Three reasons:

First, Heirlooms are designed to be about as powerful as a blue item of the same level. Short of farming dungeons aggressively, you’d have a hard time finding an item that would be a straight upgrade from an Heirloom.

Second, they’ll scale with your level. I know that seems obvious, but consider: Even if you bust your ass farming for, say, a Hatebringer ( http://www.wowhead.com/item=24461 ), which would be an upgrade from the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper at level 63 (if only because of sockets), your Heirloom would surpass it within a level or two. Considering that you’ve been through Outland before and know how to quest efficiently, that means that any non-Heirloom weapon would only be worth using for an hour or two, at which point the substantial work required to acquire such a weapon would be for naught.

Third, hit rating isn’t too important while leveling. I don’t know offhand the miss chances against mobs your own level, but they’re not particularly high. Furthermore, even if you miss a big attack once in a while … so what? You’re not racing an enrage timer against a raid boss. The mob dies three seconds later than it should have, and you go about your business. Not a big deal.

Also, regarding Blood DKs … talent changes or no talent changes, they’re still obscenely hard to kill. I’m finishing up Loremaster of Northrend on my Blood tank and she’s ripping through Icecrown elites like they’re not even there. It’s beautiful.

The other nice thing about the Arcanite Reaper is that it’s strength-itemised, and while I haven’t checked cata stat changes on 1h quest weapons, I doubt many will be strength or AP itemised. I know the 1h heirlooms are all agility-based, so not a lot of help for SMF there.

As to hit, I generally love having as much of it as I can get while leveling (on any toon, really). A miss is effectively an anti-crit, and I’ll take hit or expertise gear over crit when the two pieces are about equal. Of course, it doesn’t show up too often, and I don’t really worry about not having it.

I’m probably going to level my 80 warrior up to 85 as prot in dps gear and battle stance with the awesomely fun combo of Rend, Blood and Thunder to spread it, and chaining Victory Rush. It’s just what I’m used to, but I bet each other spec has its supporters and who am I to say anything about that. I can just say what I personally enjoy.

I just dinged 80 on my warrior 3 days ago. I was Fury for the 2 plus years that took from lvl 1-62. A couple of months back, when I decided to level him for real, I went with just the Heirloom axe and Arms Spec b/c of the self heal thing. I dual specced Fury and went Titan’s with two of the PVP heirloom 2Hand Swords (Aesthetics and Symmetry). Pre-4.0 it was a lot easier for me to level as Arms. I went from 72-80 after the patch and was just confused enough by the changes to stay Arms for the semi-familiar feel of it and never switched specs. Mostly, it was Bladestorm plus the glyphs in the new patch that you mentioned (forget exactly what they are, but it was more Charge and more bang from Victory Rush than ever before) that kept me at it. Bladestorm 4 mobs, 2 die and VR to full health and Mortal Stroke – Overpower-Execute as needed. Then it was charge the next group and Cleave/Stomp until one goes down VR and start over again. I think that I should have gone Fury after 4.0. I had access to Blood Craze when 4.0 hit, and that kept me Arms. Fury now has the same benefits that Arms had before the patch, only it looks cooler.

After all, when I am looking at the same shoulders for 30+ levels dual wielding two-handers makes it more fun to look at the log in screen. It’s worth another Reaper, I think. Never know when ya might roll another warrior of some race you haven’t played before. I hate mailing looms back and forth. I’m the kind of geek that cares about the log-in screen when I am deciding what I’m going to do with my hour of play time that night. Looking badass when I load up the game will keep a character from getting banished to the Alliance side like my Mage or turned into a bank like my Lock. The new animations on the log in screen are my kind of thing.

It’s funny, I have 2 characters maxed with the argent tournament for the sole purpose of grinding out heirlooms. (side note: Killing the damn Kraken is worth an extra seal..takes at least 2 people and sometimes 3 if the timing is off on the flight). I can grind dailies easier than I can run instances right now. Burn out issues. However, I ran a few on the warrior from 78-80 and met nary an asshat. In like 8 or so dungeon runs the douchebag count was 0. Kind of shocking.

I was leveling a shammy before patch and i had him with the arc reaper. but since patch 4.0 and dual wield coming soooo early i decided to get a pair of maces (not sure if plural is maces, but hey this is the internet who cares right?) when i was it was like 2k JP i said forget that…. with some help from google and wowhead found a way to the maces bout 35 off to get the pair and a whole lot of rep, never bothered with the argent tournament till now

My horde druid dinged 70 yesterday and I expect to hit 71 today or tomorrow. I’m bummed she can’t do the SFF quest but it’s not slowing me down any. She’s the last toon I want to get to 80 before Cata, that way I’ve got a shaman/mage/druid trio on both factions 😀

I looked at the new heirloom prices and nearly fainted. I said oh well I have lots of argent tournament tokens that I can buy heirlooms with. Unfortunately it appears that faction transferring resets the argent tournament npcs so you have to start from scratch. All those tokens and it won’t let me buy anything ! boooo

I faction transferred my Druid from Alliance to Horde a long ways back, and when I did I *had* been exalted/maxed with the Argent Tournament. As you noted, after you change factions, you lose all rep and have to start from scratch.

I was so disgusted that I never did anything with AT again.

Fast forward to last week, I faction changed my Druid BACK to Alliance…. and I am once more 100% maxed with the Argent Tournament. It remembered where I was and gave it back, instead of erasing it and resetting it, and staying reset.

Thank you for that bit of information. That certainly lessens my frustration with those vendors hehe. I did a little quick reading after seeing this and someone mentioned that the reason that they couldn’t bring the AT rep over was because of the way that they saved the data. Apparently there is no easy way to translate it from faction to faction. Of course they didn’t mention how they saved it but it is interesting that it comes back when you transfer back so I was wondering if they saved it somehow by character name and faction.

Out of curiosity, BBB when you changed over your druid did you keep the same name when transferring to horde and back again? I changed my name when I went to Horde and reserved my old name when it was available again for when I wanted to go back to alliance. I noticed the name change caused me to have to redo quests to get access again to the Shadow Vault vendor in Icecrown even though it said I was exalted with Knights of the Ebon Blade. I did start to do the AT rep grind again but didn’t have the motivation to finish so hopefully that didn’t cause issues when I transfer back.

As always I love to read your stuff BBB. It always puts a smile on my face when I recognize things that you are quoting hehe. Keep up the great work!

You and Eadric must have a thing goin’ on then. Maybe he’s not as Pure as his name suggests?
I have been doing Tourney dailies on 4 80s since the patch ever day and have yet to get one single crusader’s seal in that stupid little blue bag.
Of course, last night was the 41st time that I have tanked HHoR (I do it daily also) waiting for Marwyn to drop that blasted Harpoon and it hasn’t dropped once. The RNG gods must hate me. . .
Fortunately I’m “stuck” using the Staff of Trickery so it isn’t THAT bad.
Thanks for the great blogs. This blog is another of my dailies.

What Dhrak below said is the secret, RiegnMan. Since 4.0, you no longer see the Seal in the bag itselff. Ever. When you open the blue bag, a message quietly arrives in your chat window mentioning, as if as an afterthought, that you got a seal. Very easy to miss with other stuff going on, especially since, when you open a bag, the impulse is to look at the open bag, not the chat log.

But yes, you should have been getting a seal every time you chose the loot bag.

Those (and whatever else the shady vendor in the Underbelly has to offer) might just be easier to obtain than the stress that is HHoR, depending on your faction’s WG luck etc. I don’t like PvP, but these pieces were worth some Wintergrasp and some weekend-battlegrounds.

I levelled my fury warrior to 77 pre 4.0 and haven’t gotten back to it since then . . . so you know, take it with a grain of salt. . . but once I got Titan’s Grip, I dual wielded heirloom Arcanite Reapers while watching for something better to come along and it never did. Not even considering that a non-heirloom weapon could have worn a better enchantment. The scaling each level just constantly kept the axes that much better than anything else I could find.